


Witches and the Power of Seior

by Cliodna_Queen_Of_The_Banshee



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, F/M, Female Thor (Marvel), Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-05-29 15:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15076004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cliodna_Queen_Of_The_Banshee/pseuds/Cliodna_Queen_Of_The_Banshee
Summary: Infinity War ends differently. A dying Strange attempts to send Thor back in time, to when it all began. But Strange’s magic is strained. Thor ends up in Asgard years before anything begins on Asgard, and not even in his own body. In Asgardian terms, he has been put under magic, a gender-changing magic known as Seior. He is also stranded on the edge of his own planet - in a stranger’s female form.More chillingly, the original Thor is still out there, unknowing.This new character, who can't define himself, finds a "witch" who agrees to help him. And witches on Asgard are not always the same as witches on Earth. Memory-related, emotionally fraught magic ensues. That’s before training starts. There is a first book of adventures, trials, friendships, affairs, training, changes to go before this new character is near her original state. And then she has to get back inside the palace - no longer the person she once was.(Thor was never good at plans, but Astrid had better make one, or suffer the consequences. Along the way, she might just befriend people as opposite as Hela and Valkyrie.)Book one is pre-canon. Norse mythology and ancient culture inclusions. Training school elements. Fem Thor/Loki.





	1. Book One: Madness (The Village at the End of the World)

**Witches and the Power of Seior**

Book One

Chapter One: Madness (The Village at the End of the World)

Strange was the last one remaining alive, and not for long at that. We were at the point where this had stopped being important for strategic reasons. And I had never been a strategist, or prone to fear, but this shook even me.

This had stopped being important for strategic reasons.

It was a kind of accepting of defeat, which I had never done before.

Horror was a strange thing, it occurred to me then. When something horrific happened over a long period of time, I had recently learned, horror was like a cancer - you attempted to stave it off. I supposed this could be karmic retribution for all the times the Asgardians had tried and succeeded to make other races feel the same, feel that moment right before their decimation, but that still left the question of why I was still alive.

I had lost my mother. Then my father. Then some of my friends. Then my planet - by my own hand, partly, and I’d had to accept that. Then more of my friends. Then my people, my species, the people I had been supposed to protect. And finally - finally - my brother. That last one hadn’t really hit me for a long time. Loki had faked his own death so many times, tricked so many people, it was difficult to believe he was truly gone.

Those last words to Thanos: “You will never be a god.” It had sounded like one of Loki’s great ploys to seem more honorable and heroic at the supposed last moment. But then there was his corpse thrown next to me, dead, and the two instincts rivalled with one another.

The quiet thought first came: Maybe it hadn’t been a ploy this time.

But off to fight Thanos on Midgard, what humans called Earth, the only realm left because of its differences after the Yggsdrasil tree on Asgard that held the symbolic tree together had been destroyed and taken all the other realms with it. And I was still trying to stave off that cancer. 

Impending death, it seemed, had made my thoughts poetic.

I had been trying to rationalize it for myself. Revenge, I said, powerful motivator. Gave me purpose. I had even managed a smile, to one of the remaining allies, one of the then remaining Avengers, who had found me the only one left alive floating in space.

The only one left alive.

I had been the temperamental sort, but never the vindictive one. That had been Loki. I never said this out loud. Too much like an admittance.

And if I had thrown myself into what were essentially suicidal acts in an effort to help the Avengers’ war against Thanos, on my way back to Midgard, to Earth. Well. I refused to see them that way. The war was all that mattered. There was nothing suicidal about that.

It was easy to tell myself, then.

“The sun will shine on us once more, brother,” Loki had said before he died. 

I looked at Thanos about to destroy half the universe, the furthest great enemy, and at last I saw this to be untrue.

But I hadn’t, then, I hadn’t fully seen it coming. Not even after losing everything.

Because then the Avengers had all been gathered together on Midgard, some of them returning from space itself - Iron Man, Spiderman, and Strange among them. They had come through a portal created by Strange, one twisted with magic. “We were attacked too soon. I didn’t have time to see all the scenarios,” Strange had said, his eyes weirdly frantic, a sentence that had made no sense to me.

“He sees timeline scenarios,” Iron Man had said. “Strange’s strongest power is - was - time.”

I had followed his glance to Strange’s neckline, where an Infinity Stone was clearly missing from its amulet.

Strange’s power was time. Not is. Was.

Some people I only had time to meet. Thanos of course had eventually joined us on the Wakanda field, recovering from whatever battle he’d had to fight to get the amulet away from Strange, and after that it was essentially a mass slaughter. Never before had I felt so… small. And I hated it, irrational fury welled up within me, unusual in its hatred and unruly.

But no matter who attacked Thanos, he had all the Infinity Stones on his Infinity Gauntlet. He killed person after person, Avenger after Avenger.

And still I was left alive.

My first, absurd thought had been to wonder if I had simply eaten too many apples in the Asgardian palace courtyard’s Forest of Immortality, the one with the physical representation Yggsdrasil tree in its center. But the same would have applied to Loki - who supposedly had died, along with plenty of other refugee Asgardians on that ship who had qualified as nobility.

So why was I the only one left alive?

It was a question of pertinence, one I had never wondered before. Why did I never die? It could have been a curse, something inflicted by a war enemy of my planet long ago. But it seemed more likely that a decimated race would have tried to curse Asgard into extinction -

Not leave one of its royal family left alive.

What was the point?

There was no magical secret or strategy to the question. I had just gotten to the point where I had wondered: What was the point in me being alive? Why was it everyone else had died, but I was alive?

It was a moral, philosophical, even psychological question, and those had never been my specialty. I was an in the moment kind of person. The purpose of such questions had previously always escaped me.

But that question occurred to me now, a sign of how far my mind had gone.

I was the only one left standing on the battlefield. Bodies lay littered around me. Battlefields had never made me nauseous, I was not a squeamish man, but the flatness of the field, occasional crunches of bone, the overwhelming smell of blood -

The silence. The silence.

Thanos had raised his Infinity Gauntlet triumphantly - the Stones began glowing - not sure what else to do, I roared in pure frustration and made to charge in for another assault -

Helpless. Powerless.

Ill-prepared. For the first time in my life. Ill-prepared.

“Thor.”

I stopped and looked down. Strange lay sprawled next to me. He was dying. He had apparently been rather a vicious fighter off-planet in protection of his own Stone, and Thanos had returned the favor by pulling his insides out through his stomach. He was almost a splatter, laying in a puddle of his own blood.

I felt fury for him, helplessness, pity. I wanted to avenge him but knew not how.

I had never felt like this before.

And that was about the moment it overtook me for the first time. That unrelenting feeling: horror.

“I have to go,” I said in a hard voice.

“Thor -”

“He’s going to use the Infinity Gauntlet! He’s about to wipe out half the damn universe!” I snapped.

“I am aware of that. Listen to me,” Strange hissed, and I wasn’t sure if it was something in his tone or the blood that spurted out like spittle between his teeth there on that still, flat, body-ridden African field, but I stopped to listen. “I stored energy from the Time Stone into my body. I collected it. I have time magic leftover from when I still had the Time Stone.”

“But he has the Time Stone -!” I tried to emphasize in frustration.

“Are you always this thick-headed?! You were one of the first Avengers!” I paused. “Yes?”

“... Yes,” I finally said slowly, in a different kind of dread.

It was the feeling I got right before I was about to jump headfirst into somebody else’s foolhardy, world-saving plan. Honestly, it was a relief that I could even feel that way right now.

“This is going to involve a lot of pain and discomfort, isn’t it?” I said philosophically almost to myself, not really complaining.

Strange winced, and I was not entirely certain it was his wounds. The Infinity Gauntlet began to glow - Strange’s eyes widened.

“I’m sending you back in time!” he said hurriedly. “Back to your old body, back to when it all began for you as an Avenger!”

And I would like to say there was a lot of drama and dignity involved, but this wasn’t that kind of battle, and all that happened was a startled, “Wha -?!” and Strange slamming his shaking, paling hand against my leg.

It was cold. Unnaturally so for a human. The battlefield was beginning to glow and vibrate, pebbles in the ground shaking from the force of the Infinity Stones. We were running out of time.

Time. Something I was about to have more of, apparently.

“You have to remember this!” said Strange urgently, and his wide-eyed face smeared with blood would remain burned in my mind’s eye, the sagebrush African battlefield littered with fallen comrades among us. Oh, he didn’t have to worry about that. “When you’re back as your old self! You have to remember -!”

A wave of power echoed out around Thanos. It was about to hit me. I felt the instinctive freeze of someone against an unstoppable impending force - another unfamiliar sensation.

And then everything was gone, and no Infinity War and no Thanos had ever existed at all.

-

For a time, I was floating in a silent black space, an empty echoing void out around me. When I tried to think about how huge and empty and silent it was, and remembered this was the essence of the universe, my mind began to tear at the edges and went a little bit insane -

So instead I thought of relatively simpler things. Smaller things. 

Things that would not have been small in the past, but nonetheless.

Strange was sending me ‘back to when it first began for me as an Avenger.’ What did that mean? Did it mean my baiting of the Frost Giants and initial banishment from Asgard to Midgard by Father? Did it mean the first time the Avengers initiative assembled? Did it mean the first time the Avengers initiative assembled universe-wide, as at the beginning of the Infinity War when I was already King of a ship of Asgardian refugees and some things were far, far too late?

He’d said I was going back to my old body, but I had to remember what had happened - but hadn’t happened.

That was confusing, so I also stopped thinking about that.

Did that mean… my old body but this same mind…? The mind that remembered - I supposed it would be a different timeline. A timeline that hadn’t happened yet. Might never happen, if I changed things.

I had memories that didn’t exist.

I decided I didn’t envy Strange. Time and timelines and alternate universes and scenarios were headache-inducing.

Though that could have just been the pressing, impending void of the universe against my skull.

Anyway, the point was - I could go back and make sure none of it happened. None of the horrible things, none of the badness, none of the destruction.

Somehow.

I wouldn’t be able to just charge in and bulldoze my way through, I realized. I would need a plan. This filled me with a sense of dread. Plans… were not my forte. They were Loki’s forte. It was why we’d worked well together when we were younger. Loki made plots, he was diplomatic, he was strategic.

And I was strong. Impulsive, golden, stubborn, strong. We each had our roles. I had mine.

But the Infinity War had just taught me an important thing: My previous role was apparently enough to keep me alive.

It was also apparently not enough to keep everyone else alive.

Out of nowhere, unbidden, Stark’s words, Iron Man’s words, came back to me at the first assembly of the initial Avengers: “Because if we can’t protect the Earth, you can be damned sure we’ll avenge it.”

A simpler time. A more innocent time, oddly. I tried to take myself back to that.

And then, as if this had triggered something, I was sucked backward through a kind of hole, a rip in the continuum.

There was pressure on me from all sides, my arms and legs were locked around me, my eyeballs were being forced back into my skull - and yes, I was definitely going to be sick, and what happened to vomit when you threw up in the space time continuum of the universe, and why was I thinking about that right now -

One thing I had learned: the minute you start to wonder how things could get any worse, that is when they do.

This was an unusually pessimistic thought for me to have, but I was almost certain the situation warranted it.

Because then I could feel my skin begin to bubble and ooze. A burning sensation filled me, a nauseating shift and tingling happening all over my body.

I had just enough time to feel well and truly ill, just enough time to wonder if Strange would simply end up killing me in a different way -

When something pulsed electric across my brain and I blacked out.

-

Images in my mind. 

The nine realms, laid out in a cosmic star system before me. The capital of Asgard - my heart heightened in ecstatic relief and I could have sobbed but I wasn’t really conscious. The rainbow Bifrost bridge, unharmed, Heimdall guarding its entrance. The golden palace, still standing. The magnificent city.

Then long swathes of empty land. Villages.

How far away was I going?

Where I was going?

-

I woke up on a beach - somewhere. I finally landed on blessed ground in blessedly relieving air, and I got onto my hands and knees shaking weakly and promptly threw up all over the beach. I vomited, retching truly and horribly -

The dying. The battlefield. The dying. The space time continuum. 

My planet going up in flames.

I retched long and hard until my eyes burned with tears, which I told myself without quite managing to convince myself was simply because of the vomiting.

Finally, my stomach was just throwing up yellowish bile, acid, in the calm, alone silence, and I forced myself to stop.

I was fine, I told myself with weak light-heartedness. I was fine.

But I knew I wasn’t.

I crawled across the sand away from the vomit, and collapsed on my back on the beach. For I was on a beach. I could hear the waves, the ocean, lapping against the shoreline. I could feel the sand beneath me. The sky above me was an oddly familiar silvery-grey.

I was naked, so that was odd. No weapon. No anything.

I decided to try to figure out where I was from my weakened position lying on the beach. For clearly I had not woken up in Valhalla - not the realm for dead and honored warriors of all the nine realms, which was gone in my time but supposedly still present in this one. And not the Asgardian central palace rather hopefully and in retrospect naively named after Valhalla, which was where I had sort of expected to wake up.

I lifted my head and looked around. A calm, almost reflective glass sea, gently rippling. A black pebble beach. I looked closer. Pearls.

A black pearl beach. Why was that familiar? What memory was it trying to trigger? I forced my weary mind to try to get in line.

A school lesson from long ago. “Asgardian beaches,” said the teacher, “are black pebble beaches dotted with deep black pearls.”

It was not freezing, but the sky was grey and I finally registered the cool, bracing wind whipping my face out across flat land. It felt… familiar.

Was I… still in Asgard?

The Asgardian planet had been - well, still was, I thought with a burst of ecstatic relief as I sat up too quickly in delight, but I had to keep my head, had to keep my head - the Asgardian planet was surrounded on all its edges by a sea, a sea which reached to the ends of the world.

I was on the very edge of Asgard. I was at the end of the world.

My world.

Tears stung my eyes, but I forced myself to my feet wildly through the blur in my vision. My first thought was to wonder why in the name of the gods I was here. Was the palace of Valhalla missing me? Wasn’t I supposed to have returned to my original body?

What was I doing back in time, back when Asgard was still standing… at the end of the world?

Naked?

It was like some sort of odd reverse-nightmare. I was confused, and I really wanted some sleep. Badly.

By chance, I finally glanced down, trying to get my bearings - and I froze.

Because I was not looking down at a man’s body, I finally registered. But a woman’s.

I ran, stumbling, to the sea and knelt down, staring onto my reflection. It was wide-eyed, weak, and pale, hair wild and unkempt, blowing about in the wind. It was undoubtedly not my face. It was also undoubtedly a woman’s, a stranger’s.

I felt a stirring of dread.

Sending me all the way back here… it must have been a huge strain, even for Strange. Strange who had been dying. Strange who might not have been thinking straight.

Strange who had done this not with the Time Infinity Stone, but with the magic leftover in his own body.

Oh, fuck.

I reached a shaking hand up to my face. It was real, I could touch it, this was not a dream. I ran a hand through my hair - bewildered. Questions, so many questions.

Had Strange transfigured my original body? Had I inhabited someone else’s body, like an invader or a demon? Was the original Thor still out there in Valhalla? Or was he here, was I him?

More importantly… where was I in the timeline?

And what the hell was I going to do like this - powerless?

Somehow, I had the strangest feeling this had been no one else’s body. She was an odd-looking woman, almost computer synthesized, difficult to explain, an amalgamation of everything that in the end came to nothing. She was curiously indescribable, nothing notable, without much distinct color or form. Unexceptional. No notable features. In between everything. Easy to miss.

And a teenager.

I crawled across the sand, stood and stumbled, crawled away into a little alcove on the beach between two great black sea cliffs. I sat curled up, sheltered somewhat against the frigid wind, and I gave into my frayed, exhausted baser instinct and cried for a few minutes. It was entirely undignified, I hadn’t done it in years, and I blamed it entirely and rather unfairly on the other Avengers.

I curled up on myself, against my knees, hands grabbing at my face, my sobs witnessed by no one and being lost into the wind. Eventually, some laughter at the horribleness, the pointlessness and the black humor, of my own situation was added to the sobs. My body twisted, writhing, raking.

I had never had a hysterical fit before.

My body felt strange to me, breasts pressing against legs. I felt alien, skin crawling, a stranger to my own body.

I was an inhabitant, but this body was not mine. And I didn’t want to be here.

I was not a woman, not really. Deep down, I was still a man.

-

Blood. Death. Screaming. I realized the screaming was mine.

I jerked awake at the freezing cold, my last scream echoing out around me into the wind, still tired body shaking from nightmares and cold, and I realized night had fallen. The stars had come out. I had fallen asleep with now stiff and painful limbs, still curled in on myself.

And I would get nowhere wasting away on this beach, though at the moment it was a tempting if highly dramatic thought.

People needed me. Maybe. If I could figure this out.

I forced myself to my feet, wincing at the cricks in my limbs. I was still weak and shaky, and now I was hungry, though nowhere near as hungry as I would have been in my old body. So that was something.

I found some steps led into the side of the black cliff, up onto land. My heart leapt - they looked man made. A village!

The water was washing at my ankles. Seawater was now encroaching, had made it this far, just brushing the cliffs.

I forced myself, wading my way naked through the freezing water, which was now at my ankles, now at my hips - alien, female hips. 

I really did hope I wouldn’t have to swim. It sounded pathetic, but I wasn’t sure I had the energy.

Finally, I made it to the steps and began to climb - faster and faster, strangely heavy chest heaving - crawling my way up the steps against the encroaching waves -

Finally, I was on land in a burst of tiny triumph that felt so absurdly huge I cheered. Then I backed away in a jump as a high wave lashed at the very edge of the black cliff.

I looked around. Flat land. Darkness.

I shrugged against the cold, and walked on into that dark void with deadly determination.

Truly deadly. It might kill me.

I trudged on into the growing night, now shivering and freezing cold and dripping wet in addition to being tired, weak, and hungry - and the weather wasn’t getting any warmer.

I had found in times of desperation it did not help to picture all the things you could currently die of. (Hypothermia. Hunger. Exhaustion. Murder at a visceral display of nudity at the hands of strange villagers who had no idea who I was.) So I pushed the thoughts out of my head and trudged on. They wouldn’t help anyway. There was no point in worrying right now. I had current, pressing problems. 

Clothing. Food. Shelter.

It was oddly comforting, that I could still organize my thoughts in this positive leader soldier-like way, still blot out pain and exhaustion and discomfort.

Though I didn’t think I’d ever felt this weak as… Thor.

How odd. I still was Thor.

Wasn’t I?

Not thinking about that right now. More pressing worries. Concerns.

Not dying. Goal number one.

So I found myself tripping across a great, flat expanse of open Asgardian land, there on the edge of the world, in growing nighttime. This was my planet. I could still see enough that the landscape was immediately clear to me, shapes and silhouettes and feelings.

My feet were bleeding and my legs were freezing up. Ignore it. Keep going.

I focused on the land - blessedly familiar land. (Not a bad place to die. Don’t have that thought.) Long greenish-brown fields. Beautiful slight rolling hills in the distance, painted blue against the blackening sky dotted clear with stars.

Lights in the distance. The village.

I crept up on it - and put a hand to my mouth, choking back a strange kind of sadness. I was seeing something that was to me already gone. A small farming village with a big central courtyard, filled with small ancient gilded stone buildings standing on humble stone pillars, the very image of wealthy Asgard. Fires were lit in every window, families in tunics, trousers, dresses, and undergarments gathered around them. The farming fields were out beyond their village. A schoolhouse was set nearby, a small one for commoners. A local pub and tavern. A stall for the village horses. A village graveyard filled with the great, shadowy shapes of burnt ship graves with stones laid atop them.

And off to the side, two great buildings and a huge expanse between them that I couldn’t make out. One was in the shape of a temple, to the gods even older than us, the ones no one had ever seen who lived in the real Valhalla realm. (The ones I had inadvertently destroyed when all the realms had collapsed during Ragnarok. Faced with a choice between destroying planet and destroying people, I had chosen to destroy the planet and save the people - but mine wasn’t the only realm I had sentenced. Only Midgard, Earth, was left unharmed. Not that this applied anymore, a confusing thought.) So, a Shamanic temple. The local forest stood near the temple, which made sense given our religious beliefs. But what was the other building…? And what was the great expanse in the middle…?

Not important right now.

I just hoped I wasn’t in some strange alternate universe where nothing was the same. And not for my own sake.

I hoped this because I hoped that I was right and I was still in the same universe - that the Infinity War hadn’t happened. Not anywhere.

I crept up to this village at the end of the world, very embarrassingly aware that I technically had no clothes on, in addition to being in the humiliating form of an oddly indescribable, unexceptional woman. I crept up to a clothes-line whipping in the dry wind - and grabbed a tunic and trousers, humble and simple, no gold or silk thread, no jewels, no armor.

I had decided not to completely bend my own mind by choosing under pants, under shirt, and a strap dress - not unlike the human woman habit of wearing a strap dress over a shirt and jeans - the typical ordinary Asgardian woman garb.

I would look odd, a woman dressed as a man in tunic and trousers, but I was okay with that.

“Sorry,” I whispered to the accompanying house for the thievery, wincing - I imagined Loki’s humor and I felt a spurt of pain even though he was probably still alive at this time - and I crept down the central courtyard, down the row of buildings, wondering whose door to knock on. 

My bare feet left blood. My legs were about to give out.

And then I saw it, and nearly collapsed in relief. The simple Asgardian military crest stood above a door. Before I could even think about the full implications, because of course it was me, I stumbled forward and collapsed against the doorframe.

“Please.” I knocked with almost shameful weakness, and I realized I was sobbing, the voice coming out of my mouth bizarrely female, oddly flat, and unexceptional except for its indescribability. I no longer even had my own voice. I was oddly glad of this, for the words didn’t sound like mine. “Please help.”

The door opened, and the woman on the other side gasped as I fell inward and my cheek hit without scratching the cold stone floor of her home.

I just lay there, dazed, the hardest part done. I let my body relax despite myself, I let my eyes slowly close.

“Hello! Who are you?! How did you get all the way out here?!”

I felt her shaking me, but I was already falling into unconsciousness.

I was so weak, sick, hungry, freezing, and exhausted that there were no nightmares this time. Just the blank darkness of the dying.

Relief overtook me.

So this was what it felt like, I thought with wild abandon, so this was what it felt like at last.

I had lost my head completely.

-

I fell in and out of consciousness for several days. Few actual memories came to me. All I knew was that I was in a bed, in a commoner’s home, being tended to by a woman who seemed to know what she was doing.

Which was comforting, after everything.

Bleary and delirious, I fell in and out of consciousness, stomach churning and frequently vomiting up bile in a nearby wooden bucket, previously freezing limbs now clammy and feverish, sleeping almost constantly, tossing and turning, occasional nightmare images coming to me -

I had never been this sick before, not as a god.

The woman was always there. She had a calm, quiet voice, a steady hand. Not particularly soft, or feminine, just quiet - serious - steady. I registered that she had long dark wavy hair, a pale oval solemn face, and she wore Asgardian armor and deep purple female garb. Her expression revealed little.

Hers was the only military post I had seen in the village.

Finally, I blinked my eyes open with effort one day - not shaking, but oddly calm, and slowly, oddly conscious.

“Your fever has broken and your body has recovered,” the woman said, her serious, quiet face leaning over me. “Your bound feet are almost healed. You need food.”

The minute she said it, I realized I did. My stomach ached with hunger and food sounded better right now than it had in my entire life, and that was saying something. I ate a lot.

“You’ve lost weight,” she told me matter of factly as she sat me up in the bed and placed a tray of food before me - traditional and simple fare, what I always thought of as battle fare, meat and bread, with a cup of bracing warm mead. “You haven’t been able to eat for days. So do not try to stand.”

I was in a simple stone room in a simple stone house. A hearth was lit with a flickering, cheerful fire across the bedroom from me. The bed was a four-poster canopy, but a small one. I could see a kitchen and living space in the room through the stone doorway beyond, a large warm red woven rug on that next room’s floor.

The strange soldier woman sat down in a chair across the room, elbows on her knees, and watched thoughtfully as I wolfed down my food.

“Hm. You do not eat like a woman anymore than you dress like one.”

I froze. I felt again that strange, crawling skin, alien discomfort in my own body, so pathetic and weakened.

I was not a god. More than that, I was not a man.

I had nothing against women. I just didn’t feel like one. And in a strange, petulant way, I wanted my godship back.

And there was no way to undo this. Not really. Not if it had been done by the time magic of the universe itself. Even I knew that.

“You are dressed in the clothes of a man from this village. He heard you were a dying, freezing vagrant. He will not press charges.”

I felt a spurt of warm relief. I was still wearing the single set of male clothes. That kind commoner had not even demanded that an ordinary vagrant return them.

“Where do you come from? How did you arrive without clothes at the end of the world? Who do you have?”

I lowered my cup slowly, staring solemnly down at the tray. How did I answer that? I was from a place that was gone, that had never existed. I had arrived through means impossible to describe without sounding clinically insane. And who did I really have left?

Unless I was somehow still the old Thor?

“Do you speak?” she was asking seriously now. “Are you a mute?”

I snorted and smiled despite myself. No one had ever called me that before. The woman looked confused, but I forced myself to say something.

“I am on Asgard? What year is it?”

“You are on Asgard,” said the woman slowly. “Odin’s reign, 149…”

Something inside me froze. 149?! That was -

How badly had Strange fucked this up? That was years before I had even baited the Frost Giants and first been banished to Midgard! My body was a teenager’s, a woman’s…

“And -” I swallowed. “How is the royal family?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Quite well,” she said coldly. “The Prince Thor will be celebrating a birthday soon.”

So he wasn’t missing. An immediate message would have been sent by magic to every city, town, and village in Asgard. Especially one with a military outpost, however remote.

So he was out there somewhere, unknowing, years before any of it.

So I wasn’t him.

So who was I?

… What had Strange done?

“Gods…” I realized I was clutching at my head, breathing hard, tears in my eyes. The woman stood and went to my side, putting a hand on my shoulder in panic, her previous suspicion fading. I shrugged off the hand, turning away, humiliated. “I am fine. I am fine.”

I wasn’t fine. I had never been less fine. I couldn’t even shout; my throat was hoarse.

After a strange pause I collapsed shaking into tears. Emotions I usually never gave into racked me. Despairing animal wails issued from my mouth unbidden. I felt broken down to my most essential elements, absurdly poetic once again.

This wasn’t me. It was not a person I was familiar with. I only knew the person who’d had - maybe not all, but better than most.

So who was I?

Was I nothing without the things that had made me so great?

How did I turn my thoughts off?

“Why do you ask these questions?” the woman was saying urgently. I don’t know, I silently answered. But she meant the questions out loud. “Who are you? What is your purpose?”

I looked up at her darkly, still curled up there on the bed. “I ask these questions because I am Thor.” Mind wild and churning, I said the true words before I could stop myself, practically hissed them. “And I was sent back by botched time magic to save Asgard and everyone on it, save the nine realms, save Valhalla, and keep half the universe from being wiped out.

“So not too much pressure.”

My eyes were wide, quite serious, bitingly broken and sarcastic. She paled - and I could tell she didn’t know whether or not to believe me.

There was evidence for me, so much strangeness and impossibility going in my favor. But I sounded mad. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.

Yet in my weakened, still slightly delirious state, I had just wanted to affirm to someone: I am Thor. I have a purpose.

I am Thor. I have a purpose.

Once, all I’d had left was my power and identity. Now I didn’t even have that.

-

Around half an hour, a confession, some calming silence, and a full, quiet meal later… I was starting to compose myself and realize just how badly I’d screwed up.

I sat nervously on the bed, fidgeting and my eyes shifting everywhere. I felt oddly like a child again, though I supposed this would look somehow more reasonable coming from the form of a small woman than it would have looked coming from a large man. Meanwhile, the female soldier, whose name I suddenly realized I didn’t actually know, was pacing up and down the room before me thinking hard.

“Theoretically, I should just turn you into someone right now,” she said to herself seriously, pausing and looking up at me piercingly.

“There’s, uh… no way to make you forget what I just said, right? I can’t convince you it was just… sick and hungry delirium?” I winced uneasily.

She pounded the tray before me and got right up into my face. “No!”

“But it’s been some time, and I’m all better now!”

“NO!” A stronger pound.

“Okay. Okay...” I said uneasily, leaning back, placing my hands up, and trying to smile and laugh this sudden new problem away. It didn’t entirely work. I waited for that familiar burst of uncomfortable attraction I would never act on to fill me.

Frowned when it didn’t come.

Had my sexuality changed as well? I tried to think of a man in that way and it felt weird. But I tried to think of a woman in that way and no burst of attraction appeared. Was this what being female was like? Or was that something unique to me?

“It is odd being a woman,” I said fervently to myself then, starting to recover and see this as a reasonable problem.

“Thank you for that prophetic burst of wisdom,” said the woman wryly, straightening, hands on her hips. “But I still don’t think I believe you.”

“What else would explain my appearance and my place here?” I pointed out, raising an eyebrow.

“What,” she began scathingly, “you’re saying the only reason a strange, impossible girl who acts just like a boy and is sick as if from time magic would be found on the edge of the world with nothing to her name on Asgard saying she’s the prince of Asgard is if she were really -”

She paused, realizing how incredible the story sounded otherwise.

“Well. That’s a good point,” she said thoughtfully at last. I smiled winningly - grew a little smaller when she gave me a severe glare. Then she sat right down in front of me, pulling the chair up closer to my bedside. “You’re going to convince me,” she said matter of factly. “I’m the one who found you delirious, so now you have to put up with me.

“You’re going to convince me.”

“Okay. Before I ask how…” I said slowly, my eyebrows rising a little disbelievingly. “Do you mind telling me your name? It is getting annoying thinking of you as ‘the woman’,” I stated matter of factly. “While you’re at it, you can tell me what village I’m in.”

“You don’t even know what village you’re in?” she said flatly.

“No idea,” I said rather proudly.

She sighed and put her chin in her hand - giving my uncomfortable smile an assessing stare - judging me for suitability. “Fine,” she said, shrugging. “I will indulge you. Neither are terribly important pieces of information. And then you will convince me, if you can, that your story is true. We go from there.”

“Neither are terribly important pieces of information. Not even your name?” I asked curiously. I probably shouldn’t have asked this question, but she was a soldier and it was just such a strange thing to say. 

“You will not have heard of me, nor probably much of the corps I lead,” she said, and then she smirked at something indefinable. “There is a reason my corps and I exist on the edge of the world.

“According to all common methods of knowledge,” she continued, with a wonderful sense of irony, “I am not a terribly important person.”

I perked up. “So… saying I’m the prince of Asgard come back to save everyone… you might be able to help me?”

It was finally hitting me: Everyone was still alive.

Everyone was still alive.

And as ecstasy and hope filled me, in this whirlwind roller coaster of a week, I realized I had something that could be both an advantage and a disadvantage: I had several years in isolation to myself, and nobody knew who I was.

Nobody except an Asgardian commander soldier who sounded important enough to be hidden to my royalty-trained ears.

The woman gave me an assessing look and a smile. Her eyes were sharp. “... I might,” she agreed.

-

“My name is Adelina,” she said. “I am the leader of the local military corps.”

“Do most of them reside in that odd building I saw over there?” I said curiously. “The one opposite the temple?”

“We own that, and the training field beyond it,” she allowed. That explained the expanse in between. “One half of the building is for the men, the other half for the women. As the head commander, I am allowed my own village outpost and home. The accompanying village you have arrived at is called Hafnoburg - The Village at the End of the World.”

“What makes a corps special enough to hide them away in The Village at the End of the World?” I asked with slight incredulity

Adelina smiled slyly. “That wasn’t one of your questions,” she said smoothly, in a move truly worthy of Loki. “My turn. That information you have to earn, and you’re about to.”

“Right. I have to convince you I’m the prince sent back in time through botched time magic. Hence my physical appearance. But how?”

“What does the Forest of Immortality in the Valhalla palace courtyard look like?”

I was surprised. “... The apples are golden,” I admitted, “shining. The trunks and leaves have a yellow tinge, as in autumn, but constantly like an evergreen.”

“And what’s in the middle?”

“The Yggsdrasil tree, which keeps the realms together,” I answered, with a brief pang of solemnity.

“And what does it look like?”

“Ancient, twisting - but surprisingly small,” I answered. “Remarkably unexceptional, considering it holds everything together.”

She paused, surprised. This, she knew, was true - and not an answer she would expect someone with no knowledge to give.

“You are not immortal, I can sense it with my magic,” she said. “I just recently achieved access to the forest myself with my rank. So the apples of immortality… What do they taste like?”

Her eyes had become crafty. I smiled.

“Like nectar. The juice has almost a tree sap quality.”

She sat back, stunned. She realized I was telling the truth. I grinned teasingly at her.

“Everything else taken into account, do you believe me now?”

“... I have to,” she admitted, stunned. “I do believe you’re actually not insane. What - what happened, Your Highness?” She leaned forward, worried, wondering. “Why have you come back?”

I gave her a sad, almost pitying look. “You will be sorry you asked,” I said. “It’s not a happy story. And it doesn’t have a good ending.”

-

Adelina sat back in the chair and was silent for a long time after I finished my story.

“So you have come back… to right your wrongs, and to save everyone,” she realized. “And for some reason, the universe dumped you as an anonymous teenage girl… on the beach six miles away from Hafnoburg.”

She looked up, eyes gleaming, and she leaned forward again intently.

“What if it wasn’t an accident?” she said then. “What if it wasn’t a mistake?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“Clearly you have strength - to walk six miles in that state,” she said, sharply interested. “In the right direction, no less. 

“Hafnoburg,” she said, smirking, “houses the facility where we train witches.”

“Witches?” I said skeptically.

“What do you think that building is?” She nodded her head to the building invisible behind the room’s left wall. “A training facility.”

“Aren’t witches supposed to be… I am a woman now,” I realized, frowning. “And I need power. I don’t have any.”

“Half the witch corps is male, first off,” said Adelina, raising an eyebrow, puzzled. “Witches are not all women. But… you have trouble seeing yourself as a woman?”

“I’m not one,” I said with certainty.

Adelina gave me a thoughtful look. “Before I tell you what our training corps entails,” she said, “can I share a rather unusual piece of magical wisdom and knowledge with you?”

“At this point, anything would help,” I said frankly.

Her lips twitched toward a smile she was trying hard to suppress. “Well. Quite,” she admitted in amusement. “There is a magic, unknown to most and rather on the edge of dark arts, known as Seior.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I said, frowning.

“No. Most haven’t. It isn’t a magic that’s talked about a lot in polite circles - something I have issue with. No discussion of Seior leads to issues like your contempt toward being an ordinary woman. But it does exist.

“Seior is a magic stretching or overturning the boundaries of gender in order to gain further wisdom,” said Adelina succinctly. “It is an ancient magic.”

“It’s been around a long time. And you’re saying… that being a woman will make me wiser? I suppose, with the added perspective…”

“Exactly. That was always the point of Seior,” said Adelina. “This is just an extreme, universe-triggered version of Seior. This is why all our ancient gods usually have both male and female counterpart names - though going around with any version of the name Thor for you would be both cheap and a bit of a giveaway.

“But if it makes you feel any better,” she said, eyes gleaming, on a sudden inspiration, “your father, King Odin, was known as a younger person to go through quests where he temporarily invoked Seior willingly. He supported the controversial art - he believed fluidity in gender was a fount of wisdom.”

“My… father did that?” I said quietly, my eyes widening.

“Your father, King Odin, in addition to being the god of war and arcane wisdom, is also the god of many of the arts witches have to learn in addition to battle. Things like poetry, art -”

“He is a master over all the things I never had the time for,” I realized.

Could Adelina be right? Was there… an actual lesson somewhere in all this mess?

“Then I have to go through it!” I said suddenly, bursting upright and slightly startling Adelina - her eyes widened.

At last, she smiled. “I thought that might help,” she said.

“It’s just… incredible,” I admitted. 

“It’s a lot to wrap the head around,” she admitted. “And I can talk to you more about these things at a later time. These issues are far from over, just because you’re more cheerful.”

“Wonderful.” She gave me a glare and I subsided.

“For now.” She tossed her hair back, lifted her chin, and became all-business. “We formulate a plan, and I tell you more about what our training would entail. I can get you in - of course. But there is a lot I have to tell you before that.

“First - would you like your father’s training? How do we tell your family?”

She looked at me carefully.

“... We don’t,” I realized quietly, staring straight ahead of myself.

“You wish to hide and be an ordinary person?”

“I wish nothing of the sort!” My temper snapped and I snarled so viciously that she backed away instinctively, prowling and cautious like a cat. “But… it’s my job to save them. And it’s their job…”

“To live your life?” she said quietly.

“... This isn’t their fight,” was all I said, looking away.

“That is debatable. So you mean to sacrifice your life for theirs? What about your life?”

I just looked at her. “I am no longer Thor.” The words came out softer than I’d intended. It was a difficult thing to admit.

Adelina gave me a long, hard look. “... Hm,” she said, and she sat primly back down. I had the dreading, suspicious feeling that wasn’t actually the end of this conversation. “So you want me to risk hiding something this large from my own King?”

“I understand if you can’t do it,” I said sympathetically.

“Your problem,” she said, narrow-eyed, “is that you are not seeing the full gravity of my situation. If I do not tell the King, I betray the royal family. But if I do tell the King… I also betray the royal family.”

I gave her a surprised look - and then was rather touched.

The loyalty of a subject. I was no longer as sure as I used to be that I deserved it.

“... In the end, I will not tell him,” she admitted. “But only because you know more about saving the universe than I or the current King do. And that has to take precedence.”

I felt this weight, this gravity, and I accepted it. “Thank you,” I said simply.

“So. You will be trained by us. Now to what I and my facility do,” she said crisply, back to business. “I take in teenage girls. There is a nearby accompanying male corps, and the two often intermarry. These people collectively are trained to become seductive spies for Asgard.”

“Subtlety is not my specialty,” I admitted.

“Then you will have to do a lot of learning,” she said severely. “You have only known life as a prince. You don’t understand. Even saying a family here takes you in, you have no options. And for people of either gender without options who want to go somewhere in life - there are really only two options. Shamanic priest or priestess…

“Or witch.

“And priests and priestesses don’t fight.”

“I… was not prepared for my last battle,” I admitted, troubled. “You have already told me my father had mastered things I never bothered to learn. Perhaps learning… would be useful.”

She nodded once to my point. “Witches are trained in the arts of seduction alongside the arts of fighting. Their job is to infiltrate other places as spies and gather information. This is their chief function. But they must also learn to fight, should something in a mission go south, as it often does.” She rolled her eyes when I visibly brightened. “Asgardian witches have been feared throughout the learned cosmos for a long time because they are near impossible to spot, not even being designated by gender.

“Now, here is the important part, the most vital part for you. A good incentive to do well. You wish to save your friends and family? Well the most powerful, highest-ranking witches often attend at the palace. Even I, the leader of the training facility itself, sometimes do myself.

“But you have to be not only powerful - but high in rank, and graduated successfully from training.”

I paused, my eyes widening. To go back to Valhalla… and not as a prince… with no one recognizing me…

But then something inside me hardened. It was the only way to truly affect change. I had to do it.

Adelina was watching my expressive face cautiously. “Don’t play poker,” she said gently at last, wryly amused. “At least, not till after training.” I looked up and smiled in cheerful amusement despite myself. “This would be your perfect way back in - so you have to go through training anyway, even for non power reasons. Once I have everything set up for you, you would board at that building and train inside it, and at the accompanying training field.

“Do you agree to these terms?”

“I do,” I said immediately, for by now I was fully convinced. “I don’t see a better option, I have to.” Adelina nodded in acceptance of this necessity. “Which means I also accept your help. But… would I really turn any heads… like this?” I asked tentatively, gesturing to my unremarkable form. I winced. “And… exactly what does training entail?”

“I will tell you my plan, and then tell you about training,” she agreed. “So. My plan for you.

“All witches possess magic, but your father gifted me with a power of my own that no one else has. Each girl or boy under my care as a budding soldier for Asgard eventually earns their own power ‘designation’ that I give them. Your designation was thunder; your brother’s was tricks. Well each witch has a designation on a smaller-rank, non-god level as well. And each girl or boy crafts themselves a specific weapon as they rise in the Asgardian ranks during training.

“You see, then, what my power is - to give people gifts that change who they are, as I feel they earn them.

“I can shift my power slightly in this case. I can give you your own appearance - one that you choose for yourself - and you get the rare privilege of choosing your own new given name. A female one that has nothing to do with your old name.”

“You… can’t change my gender?” I asked, wincing.

“It is beyond my power. Would you want me to? Would it be wise?” she asked seriously. “To return closer to your old self when you are trying to remain anonymous?”

“Fair point,” I admitted. “So I choose what I want to look like as a woman… I choose a female name…”

“And there is one more element I will gift you,” she said. “This is where it gets tricky.

“Your memories from the other timeline will stay with you - forever. But to help you cope - and to get you more used to the idea of being a woman - I can give you a false memory background for this life as a woman. Those would become your founding memories instead. The other timeline memories would become what they are - images from a different life.”

“You want to give me… fake happy memories?” I said, frowning.

“Not entirely fake. I do this with a new girl occasionally, to fit her in here. A series of families volunteer the childhood memories of their own daughter who has already died in service. A series of families usually from the surrounding villages. You would choose a childhood background, receive these childhood memories, and for all intents and purposes become a member of that commoner family. Your strange appearance can be explained away by semblance to a mysterious dead relative.

“The family has a daughter again. Their late daughter’s memories are put to good use. The new girl gets a family. And in your case, you become slightly more accustomed to a new sex and sexuality, though some of the change and self realization will only come with time.

“Having an original name not like the late daughter’s old name… helps. Of course, the new girl spends most of her time boarding away from her family, so no one in the home village ever quite notices. The home village is told the new girl is a niece, while outsiders are under the illusion the new girl is an original daughter.

“You see? You infiltrate a willing commoner family. A new name, a new appearance, and a new childhood.

“A new person. A person who has chosen her childhood. With images from another life.”

“That is… emotionally fraught,” I pointed out, troubled. “For a lot of reasons. Including the feelings of the families I reject.”

Adelina was solemn, not remotely triumphant. “I am aware,” she said. “I have seen this in action. But I will be here to talk you through it. Talk you through your new family, your adjustments to being a commoner, your adjustments to being a woman… and your alternate timeline memories from a distant past, a future that hasn’t happened yet but has nonetheless affected you deeply.

“There will be a lot of adjusting to go through before I am satisfied you as a person are ready for witch training. Don’t expect to jump in immediately - I have heard of the rashness of Prince Thor.”

“So everyone had. That’s comforting,” I said thoughtfully. “And then I board and jump right into witch training. You realize,” I said matter of factly, “that this whole plan is as insane as my story.”

Adelina smirked. “It takes a bit of madness to reach success,” she said smugly. “Now. You wanted to know what training will entail.

“Witches learn both the seductive arts, and the fighting arts. Two separate categories. The seductive arts are things like drawing and painting, singing, the lyre and harp, dance, poetry, fashion, conversation and games, seduction and flirtation, drinking, literature and languages, culture, politics and war, money… and emotional distancing. To avoid falling in love with a target, or to try to avoid it, in some cases.”

It sounded like an admittance.

“The state of your target is therefore emotionally manipulated. The idea of the corps was Odin’s - many of these arts and subjects he is the direct Asgardian god over. In this era of greater peace, he thought our corps was… necessary, to maintain information and power.

“Then we get to fighting. This does include all the physical arts, and as I said each is eventually gifted with an individual weapon. But then of course there is the power you are eventually designated over, and there is magic - magic spells, herbology, divination, and runes.

“In addition to a power designation, each girl is eventually taken to a Shamanic priestess who gives her a seductive designation - the particular seductive arts her soul and personality has power over. From then on, in future, all witches are matched to targets by whether or not their seductive ‘designation’ would best affect the target.

“With me so far?” she asked mischievously.

“Yes…” I said slowly. “I don’t suppose this is common knowledge.”

“Oh, no, we are a very secret society. We’re not supposed to give out self information to just anyone. In addition to subtle, you will have to learn to be secretive. But you are a former prince and you have already agreed to train,” said Adelina smoothly, shrugging smugly, and I smiled despite myself. “So me telling you is fine.

“You will have times off, official tournaments between trainees and adult witches both, and before graduating and being officially awarded a fighting designation, a weapon, a seductive designation, and a rank, you will have three final trials to go through.

“You will have to travel to another place as a spy and achieve some victory or accomplishment there.

“There will be a section that involves your first ‘matching’ according to seductive type and a sexual seduction.

“And your last trial will involve a great battle quest of some sort, where you must triumph and succeed.

“These boundaries and rules are purposefully loose. You will decide your own travel and your own battle quest. Only the seduction is our jurisdiction.”

“How are designations chosen? The battle ones? The weapon, the power…?”

“Both are formed by you over time. You decide. You will know, and we will know, when the time is right.

“The weapon is made of something you find along training or a trial, something meaningful. It is made by Asgard’s great weaponsmiths - the dwarf blacksmiths. 

“The power designation is found in three steps - basic type, specific type, and finally specific power. For example - abstract or concrete? Life, death, element? Questions like that. You will learn more in training.

“Finally, at step three, in your own good time, you will earn a specific designation and a specific power.

“The seductive designation, of course, comes from a Shamanic priestess meeting. The typing is separated into two or three separate categories.

“This is a lot of information. You are overwhelmed,” she observed. “Rest for now. I will get you set up. Then you will train. You never know. You might even form connections with fellow trainees here.”

She stood.

“I’m still a bit focused on the connections I just lost,” I admitted, for I was indeed overwhelmed.

Her eyes softened infinitesimally. “Understandable,” was all she said, for now, and she made to walk away.

“You do realize,” I called after her, managing a grin, “that your plan is so insane and so determined, it’s actually admirable?”

She gave a thin smile. “The fate of the universe is at stake. You might want to be coming up with your own plan during the early part of your training, former prince,” she said, and walked away.

I realized with a burst of cold that she was right. I would have to learn to be in my own way just as insane as Adelina.

Because after becoming a witch, in this hidden form, and after making it back inside the palace… I would still have to save everyone.

A plan would have to be started now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I already know what the plan will be. This story is ridiculously well plotted out and ridiculously well researched for me.
> 
> This is my very first Marvel story ever. Please be kind. I worked hard on it. Thank you.
> 
> As far as the tags go, I may add more specific Avengers much later as they come up. And I added female/female because at least Valkyrie will be openly bi. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the canon.
> 
> Not sure yet about bisexuality in other characters. Feel free to try and make the case to me.


	2. Astrid and Hafnoburg

Chapter Two: Astrid and Hafnoburg

I was walking around Adelina’s home rather restlessly by a couple of days later. Pacing, full of energy, anxious.

She came inside from the market, and her eyebrows rose rather frankly as she shut the door behind her when she saw me up and walking around. “Well, you ate all the food in my house and your feet made a bloody mess of my bed, but by now you seem to be fine.”

She went to the kitchen and began putting goods away, stoical.

“Help me,” she said flatly. “You are no longer a god or a prince anymore, and ordinary people put away groceries.”

“Fair enough,” I admitted, amused, and I began to help her put things away in the wood cupboards and shelves set into the stone wall. The fireplace crackled to our right. “Why won’t you let me out into the village?”

“Because you don’t have a set appearance and name yet. Don’t you think you should at least have those first? People are expecting you to be wearing male clothes - but how you first walk out there to them otherwise decides some things forever,” Adelina pointed out, not looking away stoically from the cupboards.

“So I need to choose an appearance and a given name first.”

“It is the very basics an ordinary vagrant would have. My current story that I have told everyone is that you are a teenage runaway from a family in another village. Adolescent rebellion, all of that. I am considering enrolling you in the witch corps because of your enormous physical endurance and survival instincts, so the story goes. Get you in line, so to speak. So we can find you things like a family and your own female clothes later on.”

How odd that would be. Or would it feel normal - after the memory implants? I couldn’t tell.

“But for now, you need an appearance and a given name,” Adelina finished succinctly. “If somebody asks you for your father’s name here in the village after that, just say you’re still angry with your family. I’m working on contacting suitable families in surrounding villages, so I’m not even certain of your possibilities yet. Best to give an excuse and a story. Hafnoburg will find out your supposed original family soon enough.”

“I’ve… been thinking about names…” I said slowly. “Adelina… do you think the gods would be angry with me? For what I did?”

She seemed surprised. “I think they may not know what you did in another timeline, the ones in Valhalla. And I think you were given an impossible choice,” said Adelina simply. “You could either sentence your entire race to extinction or sentence the nine realms. No one can fault you for Ragnarok. No matter what, a lot of people had to die.

“That is a leader - the person who can make the impossible choice. It was the type of ethical battle specialists in that field of study would talk about for hundreds of years. Let your own planet die or sentence several others. What were you supposed to do, that was completely the right decision?”

I nodded, leaning back against the counter, frowning for once and thoughtful. “I’d been considering the name Astrid,” I admitted. “It means ‘divine strength.’ I was… hoping for some. To get me through all this.”

“It is also an excellent name for a witch,” said Adelina, smirking. “Very well. I will gift you with the name and appearance all at once. Once you have them, both will seem totally natural to you, like you’ve always had them. Your gender may not seem natural to you yet, but your name and appearance will feel innate. So what do you want to look like?”

“That… I have no idea,” I admitted.

“I thought you might say that,” she said mischievously. “Sit down on the bed. I’ll get parchment and ink. We’re making a list of choices.”

“A list of choices?” I said curiously, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes. We start simple. Choices. Just trust me. I’ve thought about this,” she said, smiling.

So I sat cross-legged on the bed, and Adelina pulled up the chair next to me again. She had ink and parchment set before her on the bedside table.

“Complexion type?”

“... What?”

“All right, so - Springs tend to have bright, creamy skin tones and bright hair and eye tones. They’re typically bright or light blondes. Summers have a cooler, almost ash-like skin tone, and their hair typically ranges from dark blonde to brown. Autumns have a golden skin tone, and red or brown hair. Winters have a piercingly clear skin tone, either very pale or very deeply dark, and they typically have either pale white blonde or very black hair.” Adelina sat back, waiting for me to make my decision.

“So if I’m a Spring… I’d have to be pale and light blonde?” I said slowly.

“Not necessarily. A darker blonde and a tanner skin color is possible. The season refers to the tone to the hair and eyes, not to the color of the hair and eyes. So some sort of blonde or light colored hair and a bright, creamy sort of tone to the skin would be necessary, but specific color shade is up for debate,” said Adelina.

“This seems like a complicated, unnecessary thing to know.”

“Not for a witch, who has to understand fashion, and not for our current exercise.”

She made good points, Adelina. She never seemed fazed by anything, either.

“You want to do Spring, then?” she prodded me.

“Yes,” I admitted. I had never felt so nervous making a completely ordinary decision. Though… the ‘ordinary’ clause was as up for debate as specific color shades when it came to complexion types, I had a feeling. “But…”

“You don’t want to be pale with light blonde hair?”

“.... No.” I forced myself out with it. “Dirty blonde hair. Blue eyes. A mahogany bronze skin tone. And a Spring.”

She didn’t even pause. She just nodded and wrote it all down.

“It’s a good look for a witch. Certainly more striking,” she commented mildly. “May I make some further recommendations?”

“Please,” I said, relaxing, relieved.

“High cheekbones?”

“... Yes.”

“Face shape? Heart shaped, or something a bit larger with heavier, striking features?”

“Heart shaped. I… don’t want to look too much like… myself. It’s best if I don’t think about that sentence too much,” I decided.

“Quite possibly,” said Adelina in dry amusement. “Eyes? Large or narrow and almond shaped?”

“Large.”

“Heavy lidded?”

“... Yes.”

“Straight hair or long, wild curls?”

“... The second one.”

“See? It’s already coming together,” she said smoothly, still scribbling. “It’s best for my magic if I have this outline to work with anyway. Facial features?”

I was trying to picture… myself? In my head. “Full lips. Wide nose,” I decided thoughtfully.

“Smile?”

“Cheerful,” was the first thing I said. “... But a playful smirk,” came next.

“Voice?”

“Hoarser, more low. I’ve been thinking about that one a lot. Not male, just…”

“Low and hoarse.” She nodded, writing. “And… body type?”

This one was also immediate. “Curvy, strong.”

“That’s not conventional.”

“I am aware.”

“Not entirely. You’re a man,” said Adelina simply. “But all right. I like this girl, I can see her. Let’s go with it.”

She stood. “You stand as well,” she said.

I stood slowly, nervously. “Er… what do I do from here?” I shifted slightly on my feet.

“Nothing. You stand and wait.”

“So… after this… my old name won’t be my first instinct? My old appearance won’t be my first instinct?” I felt oddly… sad. “Then eventually my old gender won’t be my first instinct. It’s like I’m…. being erased.”

“Your personality, memories, and strength are not being erased. If you define yourself by things other than that, this is a very sad thing indeed. Besides, there is no going back,” said Adelina simply. “You cannot return to what you once were. Why suffer the pain and grief endlessly of being… this?” She waved to me as I was right now. “Of being… nothing, a product of the universe? A reminder of the past?”

“I’m just… used to being my parents’ child,” I said quietly.

“... And physically, you won’t be anymore. Then you won’t be in memories either,” she realized. There was a heavy pause as I stared at the ground, trying to find some way of making this… positive. “Are you sure you want to go down this road?” she asked quietly.

And somehow that made me find my resolve within me.

“I am.” I looked up, determined. “I have a goal, people to save. So it has to be this way.” I rolled my shoulders and straightened.

Adelina smiled, and I could have sworn I detected a hint of warm respect and pride in her eyes. “Very well,” she said. And she waved a hand, purple energy emanating from her fingers, her face the picture of deadly concentration.

It was not like the universe’s transformation. It was like an egg had been cracked over my head. There was a slow, cold trickling down my head and neck, then down through my body. And without being sure how to describe it, I physically felt something in my mind… shift.

I paused.

“How do you feel?” she asked cautiously, lowering her hand, looking me over.

“... Surprisingly unchanged. How do I look?” I said, but then I paused. The voice that came out of my mouth… was not either of the voices I had ever used before. Male or female.

Adelina silently waved a purple fingered hand to the nearby blue carvings framed mirror on the bedroom wall and enlarged it so that it was full body. I walked over… and I was still in the same single set of male clothes, but the difference was… palpable.

The oddest part of it was how natural it all felt.

Astrid was exactly as Adelina had promised, but somehow it was different when all the choices were seen together, synthesized as one person. She was tall, curvy, and strong, with clear and bright mahogany bronze skin. Long wild curls and waves of brilliant dirty blonde hair fell around large and heavy lidded blue eyes, high cheekbones in a heart shaped face, full lips and a wide nose. I tilted my head - experimented and smiled. A cheerful, playful smirk of a smile filled my face.

“It feels… natural,” I realized in surprise, my voice low, female, and hoarse. “It fits.” I was surprised, despite myself. I was touching the curves of my body - not in a sexual way, but in a way of amazement, at how clearly I could now picture them, how natural it felt to always have had them.

If someone I had known all my life were to see me right now, they wouldn’t even realize they weren’t seeing a commoner, I realized, looking at my humble male clothes, my obvious lack of overt strength. What an odd thought.

Adelina smiled. “I told you. I am mildly talented,” she said, amused, and I laughed despite myself, turning back to her. “And what is your name?”

“Astrid,” I said, but the thing that got me was that I said it because it was the first thing that came to mind - and I paused. “Astrid,” I said at last, more certainly.

“And you’re still a man inside?”

“Yes.”

“And you still have all your memories?”

“Yes. But… it’s different.”

“How?” She sounded curious despite herself. I realized this was new for her too. I must have trusted Adelina very much, to let her try this on me, I thought in retrospect.

“Well… it seems natural to me. To be a man in a woman’s body. It’s not… a new thing I have to accustom myself to anymore. It’s like I’ve always been that way. And when I think back on all my memories… I imagine them as Astrid. Not as…”

“Prince Thor,” Adelina finished softly, giving me an intent stare. “And…” Her voice was oddly cautious. “You are… satisfied with this? For now?”

“It is better than I thought it would be,” I admitted. “More… natural, normal. It helps, actually,” I admitted thoughtfully. I turned back to her solemnly, now fully Astrid. “Thank you, Adelina.”

She smirked. “What do you think now, Astrid?” she said. “Do you still have our story of adolescent rebellion, upcoming witch training, and commoner family anger firmly in mind? If I fetch you some shoes… do you feel like braving the villagers of Hafnoburg?”

Astrid. Not Thor. Astrid.

Somehow, it was comforting - a kind of disconnection from some of the discomfort and the horror.

“Yes,” I said. Then I straightened, determined. “I have to go out there anyway,” I said. “I need to talk to the man who was kind enough to gift me his clothes. Can I do that?”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled. “You never know. It might even endear you to some of them.

“There’s no need for them to keep on seeing you as dreadful. I’ll warn you, they are very cautious of you - you are no longer royalty, and you seem to have a past.

“You will have to be yourself around them, and change their minds.”

Well. That would be… somewhat new.

-

I ventured out slowly behind Adelina into the sunlight, unusually cautious. And then I paused in surprise, smiling, tears stinging my eyes.

I had forgotten how wonderful an Asgardian small village market looked in the daytime. It was one of those little details that had eventually faded out as the memory of Asgard became further and further away - like losing someone and no longer being able to picture what they smelled like.

What else, I wondered, had I forgotten?

I walked slowly behind Adelina into the Hafnoburg marketplace. The village was clearer in the daytime, long fields of greenery surrounding the little circle of stone buildings on pillars. A huge, bustling market full of goods and colorful tents had been erected in the town square, and there were the sounds of fish and meats and breads, fruits and vegetables, and loud, excited noises, shouting, the bustle and chatter coming from everywhere.

I walked around behind Adelina, looking everywhere, smiling warmly - noticing the surprised, curious looks several villagers gave me in passing.

There was the schoolhouse, the stall for the horses, the pub and tavern. There was the small burnt ship graveyard. There was the temple off to the other side, the witch training facility, the training field in the middle, the forest beyond. And if I paid close enough attention, I could still smell the sea air on that black pebble beach down the black cliff steps six miles away.

Finally, we stopped and I looked up. Adelina had stopped in the bustling marketplace, people shoving and shouting past us, before a youngish man with a reddish brown beard, slim but wry like a farmer, who was standing before a stall with his family full of small children. Behind the stall of fish was a big, warm old matron with grey hair tied up behind her head and loose, baggy, reasonable dress and underclothes.

They all looked around - and paused completely, seeing me standing sheepishly behind Adelina.

“Astrid, my new ward,” Adelina said, nodding to me. I noticed a curious quiet as several people at the stalls around us had stopped to listen in closely. Like all villages, this one was gossipy. “She has something she would like to say to you.”

She gave me a stern look, probably for effect.

I walked forward, hands crossed before me, and bowed my head once - something I would never have done as a prince. “I am sorry for stealing your clothes,” I said. “I didn’t have any of my own. It was kind of you to let me keep them. I wanted to thank you for not pressing charges. To do so would have been within your rights.”

I hoped this was enough. It was sincere, at least.

A collective breath seemed to be held -

And then the man smiled. “Astrid, is it? It is no problem. You seemed to need them more than me.” I looked up, smiling brightly, and for some reason everyone became warmer. “I hope you return to your family soon, and do well at your training.”

“I hope so, too, sir. I would like to become a witch!” I added eagerly, nodding my head once.

“And what is your family name?” he asked politely.

“Ah. That is -” I winced and improvised a little, deciding being close to sincerity was best. I bowed my head again solemnly. “It is still painful for me, sir,” I said, and this, at least, was the truth - if not the full truth he heard.

He frowned a little, concerned, but he did not seem upset or hard-hearted. “Well, I hope you mend things with your family,” he said politely. “I remember being young. I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that. Maybe this training will be good for you.” The words were fatherly and kind, not condescending. And he bowed his head once in turn.

I straightened, beaming. To be awarded a return bow simply on my own merits - it had never happened to me before. “I’m hoping it’ll give me perspective,” I said in turn, shy but eager, which was also true.

That return bow was also a signal that the conversation was over, so Adelina and I walked on. As we left - we heard a huge shout of excited chatter suddenly start up in our wake. “Just too energetic,” I heard one woman say, “too full of idealism. That must be her problem. She doesn’t seem like a troublemaker.”

“Best to put all that energy and intelligence to good use, then,” another woman agreed. “It’s a glad thing she found us. That’s a lucky girl, to go right to Commander Adelina’s house.”

“Yes, well, and luck as well as strength is an important part of being a good witch, isn’t it?” said the first woman philosophically.

I smiled, and walked on.

I had left a good impression, I was almost certain.

Luck… not a curse. Luck. It was an interesting concept, a power I’d never realized I had. Adelina had heard, too. She saw my expression, and smiled rather secretively to herself.

We walked through the rest of the stalls, being careful to talk here and there to a few more people. I introduced myself in my new physical form as Astrid every time, and found myself smiling and chattering brightly, waving my hands animatedly as I talked to different people.

I got plenty of warm reactions. People seemed amused and fond of my equally warm expressiveness. 

Adelina and I sat on the front steps of her porch supported by pillars at the end of the afternoon. The sun hung low, pink and gold, in the sky. We had eaten while walking around shopping, and it wasn’t fancy food but there was a certain kind of joy to eating simple good food out amongst the unnoticing, bustling people. I leaned back languidly, content.

“I like it here,” I decided in the fading daylight, staring up at the sky, which today was so blue and clear. “And I can go out anytime I want, now everyone knows me. I like that people here seem to like me - just for me,” I added very softly, to make sure only Adelina could hear.

Adelina smirked, but she was staring ahead of herself at the sunset. “Now comes the next step, Astrid,” she said. “Now comes finishing up your family memory choices, and finding you a family from a surrounding village. It is time to get you some founding memories of being and feeling like a commoner woman.

“From there, whole new psychological battles begin for us.” 

There was iron determination in her voice. Somehow, her certainty that everything would work out in my own mind was comforting. I was somewhat unused to feeling uncertain myself.

But I trusted Adelina. She was a mentor figure, my savior, and I trusted her.


	3. Choosing on the Cusp

Chapter Three: Choosing on the Cusp

I was more nervous than I preferred to let on when Adelina stood in front of me in that same bedroom, in her home one afternoon.

“The memories are prepared, then,” I said almost to myself.

“Yes. You will choose from three families, commoners from surrounding villages. I will put my fingers to your skull and memories from each family will flit briefly through your mind,” said Adelina. “Then you choose, and you get that set of memory implants. They will displace your old memories as your founding memories.”

“But… I’ll still have my old memories,” I said almost to myself.

“Precisely. Better for all involved, I think,” she said crisply. I suspected she was trying to remain calm for me. “You will then have memories of being a woman with a different sexuality.”

I couldn’t wrap my head around this, and I was learning not to try. Best to just go with it.

“... Show me the options,” I said at last, frowning cautiously. She put her glowing purple fingers to my skull -

And suddenly it was like I was dreaming, lost in my own mind. A series of images played themselves out before me.

A large and wealthy but rather snobbish teaching family who cared more than they liked to admit. Lots of posturing and crowing, lots of gossipy discussions around the living room, but a genuine and rare care beneath it and a good standing.

A loving, traditional farming family. Loving, warm, whole, near perfect - nurturing. This family had everything: the mother and the father, in traditional roles, the perfect younger son and daughter.

But the third family was who interested me.

Scenes, pictures, images as I explored this one further, searching, curious. A quiet single mother, thin and brown-haired, who had a harsh life with lines in her face but was softly loving and protective. A small, warm set of rooms above a pub and tavern she ran the next town over. Images of bawdy humor amidst the mostly male miner pub members, fondness for me and my younger brother, but also drunkenness that my mother stood against with surprising toughness.

My younger brother. Unruly, problematic, and energetic, he had the sturdy build and messy black hair of our father. He ran around, scowled, made raucous trouble. But he had a good heart, shown in quiet, sad, tender moments around the evening fire - and a protection for his sister that showed itself in odd moments, like the time a teenage boy in the village had tried to grope her and the brother exploded in a fit of temper.

The village itself, surrounded by fields of flowers and long grass, insects buzzing through past the small brown village homes lit with fires. The mine in the distance. Distant memories of a miner father, with big, warm, comforting hands and a soft manner.

Images of a burnt ship grave. A father who had died. A mother and son left behind.

I realized they’d lost their daughter to service, too.

… This family needed me. And they had offered themselves up.

I also realized I was already thinking of these memories in first person, and in the end that made my decision for me. I was already emotionally invested.

Then the dreamstate abruptly faded and I stood blinking in the cold, clear air of Adelina’s bedroom. She removed her fingers and the purple glowing faded. She looked morbidly curious.

“The third one,” she realized. “That is… not what I expected.”

I smiled. “The third one,” I confirmed warmly.

“Are you sure? There is… tragedy there. Can you carry another loss?” said Adelina cautiously.

I looked downward and smiled warmly, a little sadly. “Those people seem worth it,” was all I said quietly.

And I realized that in choosing these people, I was rejecting two supposedly more perfect families. Though I had my doubts these days about ideas of perfection.

So Adelina without warning put her glowing fingers against my skull. I looked up in alarm, not nearly prepared for this, wondering if it was like not being tense before a muscle was pushed back into place -

And something pulsed black across my mind and I went temporarily unconscious.

In a strange dreamstate, I felt something shift. The memories of the Prince Thor… moved back, as distant images from another life.

Astrid’s memories with her family took front and center. All of a sudden, I was Astrid, and she was a woman, had always been a woman, had always been attracted to men.

She was a commoner. She’d lost a father. She had a family.

I was Astrid. I was a woman. I had always been a woman. I had always been attracted to men. First kisses with boys, odd moments of adolescent awkwardness and attraction in the village, the groping scene, trying on humble dresses laughing with my mother, it all flitted through my mind.

I was a commoner. I’d lost a father. I had a family. I mourned when I thought of my quiet, gentle, comforting memories of the father I no longer had. The pub and tavern and its above rooms carried the longing of home to me, as did the mining village, the miners. My mother's smells of cinnamon, soap, and cloves made me feel blissfully innocent and familiar to someone.

… And I had the memories of my crowned prince from another timeline. 

I had a whole unique appearance I had fully internalized.

I was on the cusp of becoming a witch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of fallout next chapter, and some starting plans to boot.


	4. Beginning Repercussions

Chapter Four: Beginning Repercussions

My eyes blinked themselves open… and Adelina was standing over me, looking cautious. I was lying on her bedroom floor. I slowly and hesitantly got to my feet. 

I went to the standing mirror. I looked unchanged, still a curvy woman with bronze mahogany skin and long wild dirty blonde hair, large and heavy lidded blue eyes…

But I was irrevocably Astrid, and on a fundamental level I felt changed.

“... How is it?” Adelina asked cautiously.

“Everything - it’s like everything has synced itself up.” I shook my head, trying to explain. “My name Astrid makes sense. My appearance makes sense. My past is another life, while my real childhood… or what feels like my real childhood… is somehow more… innocent.

“It’s like my Thor memories mean I have feelings and images from a past that isn’t mine. But my personality, my knowledge and strength… that hasn’t changed between lives.”

“And… your gender and sexuality?” she asked hesitantly, eyebrows rising hopefully.

“It’s still a little strange, thinking of myself as a woman…” I smiled, feeling a new sense of innocence fill me. “But not as much as it used to be,” I said cheerfully, turning back to Adelina. “I can even think of men as attractive without being horrified, which is extremely helpful.

“I’m starting to feel like maybe I can do this, and save everyone.”

She relaxed and smiled warmly. “Very good,” she said, nodding her head once. “The rest of the adjustments will come with time.

“I will be giving you a great deal of counseling before you start witch training. There are some thing I suspect remain unresolved, some things I want to help you with. That therapy is next on our to-do list, the last thing before you start training.”

She laughed as I scowled impatiently.

“Alright, alright, enough of that for now. We have to go,” she said, amused, and she went toward the front door.

“Where?” I blinked wide, puzzled eyes.

She turned back to me and smirked, her eyes sad. “All three families are waiting in a nearby field. Strange as it sounds to you now, your family does have to meet you… And the other two families at least deserve you rejecting them kindly to their faces.

“Your current family will also now have to get to know you all over again.”

I swallowed, a jump of nervousness filling me.

Here we go. The beginning of the repercussions.

-

We walked out into the field on the edge of Hafnoburg. The three families I remembered from the visions were waiting there, looking solemn and hesitant, a gentle breeze blowing at all of us.

I remembered my mother and brother as familiar to me as they had always been. How strange and cold and lonely, to see them stare at me hopefully as though I were a stranger.

Adelina and I stood waiting. I realized Adelina was not going to say anything for me. This was my admittance to make.

Finally, I decided there was nothing else for it. “My name is Astrid, a coming witch,” I said loudly, a bit of Thor coming back to me. I pointed at my family, new and yet somehow old. “I have chosen them. I already have the memories,” I added, quieter.

My mother put a hand over her mouth, tears in her eyes, as my brother cheered and hugged her hard around the waist. My mother nearly sagged over and I wanted to go to her, right then. 

My mother’s name was Emma. My brother’s name was Klaud. I was daughter of Finnr - my father.

I went over to my mother and put a concerned hand on her arm. “Why… why us?” she begged.

I smiled, pained. “You were… genuine,” was the best way I could explain it. “And you needed my help. So now I am Astrid, daughter of Finnr. You like the name?”

Tears filled her eyes. “I like it very much,” she said, nonetheless wide-eyed, pale, and hushed.

She would never know me by any old appearances or voices - only as this one. She leaned over and hugged me, rather hesitantly. I hugged her back and breathed in the warm scent of her simple dress, cinnamon, soap, and cloves.

I stood back to look at Klaud. I leaned down playfully to look at him; he seemed shy, sullen, and hesitant, which was his defense face.

“You will have to get to know me again,” I said, trying to smile warmly.

He paused - then rushed forward and hugged me hard, even as I stood surprised. 

“It’s nice,” he mumbled, “having a sister again.”

I paused - smiled a little sadly and hugged him back.

“Them - them over us?!” 

I winced and turned to look. The other families stood, enraged. It was the stiff aunt in the teaching family who had spoken.

“Don’t insult my family,” I said darkly, defensive of them. Then, softer: “I’m sorry.”

“You will regret this!” the farming father of all people boomed, scowling. “You have made a mistake, made enemies this day!” His wife was tugging at his arm but he was not listening.

“How dare you!” I said, outraged. “I am -!”

But then I paused, unable to finish the sentence. I was not a prince. Anyone could threaten me, I was capable of making any enemies I wanted.

“You are what?” the aunt sneered.

I stiffened, straightening. “I am a worthy opponent,” I said simply with dignity, “who will not strike the first blow.” For some reason, my mother smiled. Adelina watched, carefully neutral.

And even as I said it, I knew the job that lay ahead of me.

Becoming close to my family again, trying to heal certain things in them. Revisiting what I thought of as my home village. Counseling with Adelina. 

And dealing with the fallout from the angry families I had just rejected, from the decision I had just made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters are about to get longer again. These last two just needed to be their own little sections.


End file.
